Featured Publication
"Acoustic Ecology 2.0" — Garth Paine's foundational paper articulating the contemporary practice and theory of acoustic ecology, published in Contemporary Music Review, 2017.
Paine, Garth (2017). "Acoustic Ecology 2.0." Contemporary Music Review, 36(3), 171–81.
This paper articulates the evolving field of acoustic ecology — from R. Murray Schafer's foundational soundscape work to contemporary community engagement, digital archiving, and psychoacoustic monitoring. It presents AELab's approach to community-centered acoustic ecology practice and has become a key reference for the field.
Additional Publications
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Paine, Garth (2006)
"Interactive, Responsive Environments: A Broader Artistic Context." Engineering Nature: Art and Consciousness in the Post-Biological Era.
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Paine, Garth
"Playing and Hearing Sonic Environments." Published via Academia.edu.
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2017 EcoSonic MSC Poster
Research poster documenting early EcoSonic psychoacoustic monitoring toolkit findings. Available upon request — contact AELab.
Creative & Community Outcomes
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Sonidario — Fonoteca Nacional de México (2025–)
Garth Paine served as design advisor for Sonidario, a 46-speaker, fifth-order ambisonic immersive listening dome at Los Pinos, Mexico City — the first of its kind in Latin America, drawing on a precursor spatial-audio prototype developed at ASU. Opened to the public Sep 2025. Secretaría de Cultura.
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Team Limelight Rainforest wins $10M XPRIZE Rainforest (Nov 2024)
Garth Paine and ASU colleagues (Pavan Turaga, David Manuel-Navarrete, Tod Swanson, Nicholas Pilarski, Ankita Shukla) won the top prize in the XPRIZE Rainforest competition with drone-deployed bioacoustic recorders that measure biodiversity by sound, image, and environmental sampling. ASU News.
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ASU Founders' Day Award (Jan 2025)
Team Limelight Rainforest recognized among ASU's 2025 Founders' Day awardees for its XPRIZE-winning biodiversity sensing technology. ASU News.
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Wellness Dome Rainforest Listening Sessions (Mar 2025)
Free public listening sessions on the Tempe campus featuring ambisonic field recordings collected during research trips to Costa Rica and Ecuador. ASU News.
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EcoSonic Project (2025–)
Ongoing psychoacoustic and machine-learning research correlating soundscape diversity with wind, temperature, cloud cover, and climate patterns.
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Community Environmental Listening Fieldguide (2024)
Paine, G. & Yang, C. Community Environmental Listening Fieldguide, ASU Futures Lab — a guide for citizen scientists conducting environmental listening. ecolisten.org.
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Code Zero — ZeroOne (2024)
Live electronics performance with Michael Compitello at the Phoenix Synthesizer Festival.
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Frakture (2021)
Commissioned by the ASU Symphony Orchestra — a new work for full orchestra and the audience's smart phones.
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Phoenix Zoo Gunshot Detection Project (2020–2021)
A network of IoT acoustic sensors for automatic gunshot detection in Costa Rica to support wildlife conservation, funded by US Fish & Wildlife ($250k); patent held by Paine.
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EcoListen — McDowell Sonoran Conservancy (2018–)
Long-term acoustic ecology monitoring project funded by the Parsons Foundation.
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Listen(n) Commissioned Works
Six international artists commissioned to compose multichannel immersive musical works using exclusively sounds from the Listen(n) archive. Concert program available for community presentation.
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EcoRift VR Installations
Full 360° audio-visual virtual reality experiences of American Southwest national parks, presented at SxSW Eco, the United Nations, and ASU venues.
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Joshua Tree Ambisonic Field Recordings (2017)
Crowd-sourced ambisonic field recordings produced through the National Endowment for the Arts "Imagine Your Parks" partnership at Joshua Tree National Park. Available through AELab.
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AELab on PBS Catalyst
Television feature on the Acoustic Ecology Lab's research and community programs, broadcast 2019–2020.
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tree.fm Collaboration
Collaborative project streaming forest soundscapes from around the world, connecting global audiences to living acoustic environments. Launched February 2021. Visit tree.fm.
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microSoundRecorder
Environmental acoustic monitoring project at McDowell Sonoran Preserve, deploying field recording technology for ongoing acoustic ecology documentation.
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Acoustic Ecology Explained
Animation produced by Cronkite News explaining the field of acoustic ecology and AELab's research. April 2020.
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Weekly Soundwalks
Ongoing, community-led guided listening walks connecting participants to their immediate sonic environment.
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Community Environmental Listening
Ongoing citizen-science initiative training participants to record and contribute environmental soundscapes. Visit environmental-listening.org.
Conference Presentations & Invited Talks
Selected keynotes, invited talks, workshops, and refereed conference papers by Garth Paine.
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2025 — LEAM Festival: Workshop, Listening Session & Closing Concert — 3D Audio Introduction workshop, facilitated listening session, and performance in the closing concert of the 1st Festival of the Acoustic Ecology Laboratory of Mexico, presented at Sonidario, Fonoteca Nacional, Los Pinos, Mexico City, Dec 3.
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2023 — Communal Listening for Climate Action (with C. Yang). World Forum for Acoustic Ecology Conference, Atlanta Center for the Arts, FL, Mar 23–26; and Soundstainability: Making Futures from Sound, Lugano, Switzerland.
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2023 — Surface Texture 2 & Ambisonic Dome Concert — Commission for solo cello, ensemble & electronics premiered at the Prisms Festival; ambisonic dome concert of Mexican multichannel music.
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2022 — Workshop Leader, Spatial Audio — Académie supérieure de musique de Strasbourg & ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany.
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2022 — On Designing, Composing and Performing Networked Collective Interactions (with Bevilacqua, Matuszewski, Schnell). Organised Sound, Cambridge University Press.
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2018 — Keynote Speaker & Performer — Kyma International Sound Symposium, Santa Cruz, USA.
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2018 — Future Perfect (VR concert work). Toured to ZKM inSonic Festival; IRCAM/Centre Pompidou Paris; EMPAC Troy, NY; HfG Karlsruhe; Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; Conservatoire de Strasbourg; Klingt Gut, Hamburg; Zürich University of the Arts.
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2018 — Ecorift: Experiencing American National Parks through VR — Sound Forms Symposium, Royal Danish Academy of Art, Copenhagen.
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2018 — Future Perfect and Ecorift — Global Composition Conference, Darmstadt, Germany.
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2018 — Interactive Time — Electroacoustic Music Studies Conference (EMS), Florence, Italy.
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2018 — EcoSonics: Psychoacoustic Diversity Modeling for Environmental Management (with Berisha, Rowe, Hoefer, Singh, Feisst, Hall). Arid Lands Symposium, Phoenix, AZ.
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2017 — Acoustic Ecology 2.0 — Sound + Environment Conference, Hull University, UK.
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2016 — Keynote Speaker & Performer — International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME2016), Brisbane, Australia.
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2016 — Invited talk & performance, "Save the Date: Earth Itself" — Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown University, USA.
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2015 — Presidents Weekend workshop on Sustainability and Biomimicry — Presented as Director of the Acoustic Ecology Lab, ASU.
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2015 — Replicas and Replication lecture series — Institute for Humanities Research, ASU.
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2014 — "Sound of the Land" — Invited Keynote. Ecomusicologies 2014: Dialogues, University of North Carolina at Asheville.
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2014 — The Listen(n) Project: Acoustic Ecologies of the American Southwest Desert(s) (with Barclay, Feisst, Gilfillan). IUCN World Parks Congress, Sydney, Australia; and World Forum for Acoustic Ecology Conference, Viseu, Portugal.
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2013 — Arizona Design Week Launch — PechaKucha, Phoenix, AZ.
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2009 — The Soundings Festival — Limerick, Ireland.